which_chick | The handsome rooster

The horse people have a Handsome Rooster. To be clear about this, they have now and have continuously had several roosters about the place since forever. They also have hens. Assorted kinds. Eggs arrive in white, blue, green, and various shades of brown. The whole arrangement is sort of free-range-ish though there IS a chicken coop and the chickens are regularly fed. Sometimes a broody hen hatches out chicks. The smart chicks grow up. The dumb ones become cat treats. Any rooster dumb enough to approach any human with hostility Even One Time is... removed from the property. (They sell for five bucks each at the sale barn.) Over time, this approach to mutt chicken raising has generated (a) fairly clever chickens and (b) very polite roosters. That whole terrorized by a rooster thing? No. Not at the horse people's farm. Polite Roosters Only is a rule.

ANYWAY. This is not at all their only chicken, but it the the only one I have been moved to award a designation or, indeed, take any notice of at all.

The handsome rooster has been there a couple of years and is now like three or four. I don't know how long chickens live, but it isn't forever. Despite the fairly impressive spurs, as roosters go, he is a polite sort to humans.

I have enjoyed looking at The Handsome Rooster as he has grown and matured but this morning I finally made a special effort to get over there with a camera in time for decent morning lighting so that I could get a few reasonably nice pictures of his dumb ass before he died and his handsomeness was lost for all time.

If you thought this was going to be anything OTHER than pictures-of-a-chicken, you do not know me very well.

He has eyebrows. Also check out amazing detail on his chest plumage.

Here's kind of an overall picture but it's really hard to get a good picture of all his colors at once and this picture makes him look a lot plainer than he really is.

This is a better idea of what his colors are. It's hard to get it all amazing in a camera but this on his ... in-front-of-the-tail feathers is a pretty good representation of his best color.

He is indeed handsome.